Representing Wales 2026-2027: The Assessment Panel

Photo: Edward Brown

The only thing Gwyneth Lewis ever wanted to do was to be a writer. Raised speaking Welsh in Cardiff, she studied English and spent some time in the United States. She was the first National Poet of Wales and composed the six foot high words that are on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre building. Her nonfiction books include Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage, and Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling, which recently won the Creative Nonfiction category at the 2025 Book of the Year Awards and has been shortlisted in the Literature section of the Sky Arts Awards 2025. She has published ten volumes of poetry, the most recent being First Rain in Paradise.

Cameron Myers is a Commissioning Editor at Ebury, the non-fiction specialist division of Penguin Random House. His focus is on publishing high-quality commercial non-fiction that offers to readers fresh perspectives and absorbing stories. He has commissioned across a range of areas from current affairs and politics to history and memoir, and including authors such as George the Poet (‘Track Record’) and Ashley John-Baptiste (Looked After). He is also a non-executive director for Creative Access; a social enterprise committed to inclusivity in the creative industries.  

Bethany Handley is an award-winning writer, poet, and disability activist from South Wales. Her writing explores access to nature, ableism, and the landscapes that shape her - weaving creativity with activism. She is the author of Cling Film (Seren, 2025) and co-editor of Beyond / Tu Hwnt, the first bilingual anthology of Welsh Deaf and Disabled writers. Her latest publication, My Body is a Meadow: Finding Freedom in the Outdoors will be published by Headline in May 2026.

Bethany was a writer on Literature Wales’ 2023 -24 Representing Wales programme, was awarded the Gold Prize for Creative Non-fiction in the Creative Future Writers’ Award 2023 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Poetry Award 2024. She was named one of the ten most influential disabled people working in politics, law and media in the UK, and one of the 100 most influential disabled individuals in the UK in the Shaw Trust’s Disability Power 100.

Alongside her literary work, Bethany advises organisations and landowners on making the outdoors more accessible. She is also an ambassador for the Wales Coast Path, Ramblers Cymru, and Country Living’s Access for All campaign, where she champions equality in nature.

Gareth Evans-Jones is a Lecturer in Philosophy, Ethics and Religion at Bangor University, Co-Director of the National Centre for Religious Education in Wales, and a writer who works across a variety of forms. Gareth has published two novels for adults, a short story collection for children, Llanddafad (winner of the Tir na nOg Readers’ Choice Award 2025), a volume of micro literature and photography, Cylchu Cymru: Llun a Llên wrth Gerdded (winner of the Wales Book of the Year Creative Non-Fiction Award 2023), and an academic monograph on slavery and the Welsh in 19th-century America, 'Mae’r Beibl o’n tu' (UWP, 2023). Gareth won the Drama Medal at the National Eisteddfod twice (2019 and 2021) and has written for the stage, including Ynys Alys (Frân Wen, 2022).

He has contributed poetry to several anthologies, was commissioned to compose the Welcome Poem for the 2026 Urdd National Eisteddfod on Anglesey, and his work has been translated into Polish, Aramaic, Urdu, Ladakhi and Czech. He is the founder of the reading club and writing forum Llyfrau Lliwgar, and was editor of the first Welsh-language LGBTQ+ anthology, Curiadau (Barddas, 2023). In his academic work, Gareth has co-edited recent volumes in the Astudiaethau Athronyddol and Ysgrifau Beirniadol series. His research interests are wide-ranging, encompassing cultural diversity, slavery and liberty, Christianity, Judaism and Neopaganism, ethics and society, pacifism and wellbeing. He has contributed to various publications, including a critical analysis of Alltud Eifion’s complex biography of John Ystumllyn in Globalising Welsh Studies (UWP, 2024), edited by Charlotte Williams and Neil Evans.